


Thieves in the Night

by INMH



Series: after the evacuation (pacifist ending) [3]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Death, Disturbing Themes, Drama, Gen, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Strong Language, Tragedy, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-06-26 02:37:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15654012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: The junkyard is a good place for finding blue blood.





	Thieves in the Night

**Author's Note:**

> So, I mentioned in ‘Reformation’ and ‘everything is blue’ that the junkyard is where deviant androids (or at least, Ralph and Jericho) go to get blue blood- and it was either Josh or Simon in the game that said that they took blue blood from androids that had shut down… I mean, they never said they only took it from _Jericho_ androids that shut down.

Simon hated the junkyard.  
  
“It’s a necessary evil,” Josh said.  
  
He was referring to what they did _at_ the junkyard, but Simon could only think of what the junkyard functioned as when he responded, “No, I’d say it’s just evil.”  
  
They always went at night, under the cover of darkness. Simon was in more danger than Josh when they went out: Josh’s PJ500 model had mostly been present on college campuses, and was not as recognizable as the PL600s were in the general population. Simon had considered tampering with his appearance, changing his hair-color to something a little less common for his series, but ultimately he figured it wouldn’t make a difference. He just made sure to pull the hood of his sweatshirt over his head to hide his LED; Josh usually wore a baseball cap to hide his.  
  
“Ready?”  
  
“Can you ever be ready for this?”  
  
“Good point.”  
  
It was raining tonight, which was a double-edged sword: On one hand, it made them less conspicuous in their disguises, because of course they’d be covered up in this sort of weather; on the other hand, it was bad weather late at night and that meant that the streets were almost clear of people, and they stood out more as two suspicious figures wandering the streets. Never mind the general discomfort of traveling at night in miserable weather with a constant air of anxiety about one’s self, waiting for the moment when a patrol car would pull over and address them.  
  
There were times when Simon wondered why he tried so hard to stay alive. And he was finding that those times tended to coincide with their visits to the junkyard.  
  
“Nearly there.”  
  
“Goody.”  
  
Josh made no comment. Simon was rarely obstinate, rarely sarcastic, and it was understandable on nights like these, knowing what they were about to experience in the junkyard.  
  
The junkyard was not, as it were, a traditional junkyard full of garbage-bags and rotten food and broken mugs.  
  
This particular junkyard was a gigantic pit, filled with mountains of dead and dying androids.  
  
Androids, due to the presence of Thirium in their bodies, had to be disposed of in special areas that had been designed and treated to avoid having Thirium soak into the ground and cause problems. As Thirium had only been discovered for about twenty years, it was still uncertain what sort of long-term effect it had a human’s body and years of environmental disasters had Cyberlife behaving cautiously. Due to the presence of Thirium in hard drugs like Red Ice, the junkyard was fenced off and monitored by cameras to prevent addicts and dealers from getting in and siphoning Thirium from android corpses.  
  
Thankfully, Cyberlife hadn’t anticipated keeping other androids out.  
  
Josh and Simon had done this so many times they didn’t even need to scan for the blind-spots in the surveillance- they did it anyway, just to be safe, but in nearly two years it had never changed. They scaled the fence and landed hard, mud splattering all over their clothes. They hesitated at the edge of the pit, eyes adjusting to the dim light as they looked around the pit. There were a few androids up and around, stumbling around mindlessly. Occasionally they found someone who could be saved, someone in decent enough shape that they could be helped with a few scavenged biocomponents and brought back to Jericho. But more often than not the androids dumped here were too badly damaged, too close to death to be saved with what meager resources Jericho had to offer them, and Josh and Simon were forced to leave them behind.  
  
Sometimes they offered to bring someone back to Jericho, only to have them say no.  
  
“I’d rather be dead,” they said.  
  
Simon hated the fucking junkyard.  
  
“Let’s get this over with,” He said, having to raise his voice more than he would like over the patter of the rain. The weather was getting colder and the rain had brought a foreboding chill; the biocomponent that controlled an android’s ability to feel temperature had been broken in Simon since he’d lived with his owners, and nights like this were an exercise in misery for him even without a trip to his second-least-favorite place in Detroit.  
  
(The least-favorite would be the Cyberlife facility they took deviant androids to.  
  
For obvious reasons.)  
  
Carefully, Josh and Simon slid down the edge of the pit, cringing when they took a step and felt the crunch of metal and plastic beneath their feet. As long as there was no cry of pain, they didn’t look to see what they stepped on. Once they reached the bottom, it was a matter of keeping their heads on a swivel, keeping an eye on the functional androids around them while looking for dead ones that they could siphon Thirium from. Androids in this state, often as a result of extreme trauma, could be unpredictable and violent regardless of whether or not their target deserved their wrath; once, Josh had only narrowly avoided taking a shiv to the chest from a half-dead PM700 he’d been trying to help.  
  
[ _Josh, do you see that?_ ]  
  
Simon had spotted a dark figure crouching near a dead android.  
  
[ _I see it._ ]  
  
They both stayed stalk-still until the figure rose and, likely hearing them, turned around. He was immediately identifiable as an android: The large, gruesome scar on the left half of his face left it impossible for him to be mistaken for a human. He wore a sort of cloak, the hood of which was pulled over his head, and it was too dark for Simon to make out what model he was. Apart from the scar, the only thing he could make out clearly was the yellow LED spinning on his temple.  
  
“Careful,” The android said, shuffling nervously in place. “Some androids aren’t dead. Some androids are still alive- and angry.”  
  
“Yeah,” Josh said carefully, “We’ve been here before. You come here a lot?”  
  
“Sometimes. Ralph only comes sometimes. Only when he has to- Ralph doesn’t like it here.”  
  
“Amen,” Simon said flatly. He looked Ralph over. “You seem functional. Are you here for Thirium?”  
  
“Yes,” Ralph said, edging away from them. “Ralph should get back to that."  
  
“Hey,” Josh said, “When we’re done here, you can come with us to Jericho if you want. It’s safe there.”  
  
Ralph’s eyes widened, but then he shook his head. His LED was still yellow. “No, no, Ralph- Ralph isn’t good around people. Ralph gets red a lot. Ralph makes mistakes.” He shook his head, more to himself now. “No, no, bad idea.” He looked at them with wide, sad eyes. “…But thank you.”  
  
He scuttled off into the darkness of the pit and disappeared.  
  
[ _He won’t last with a scar like that. The humans will catch him._ ]  
  
Simon sighed.  
  
[ _I assume he knows the risks. We can’t force him to come with us._ ]  
  
They got to work.  
  
There was a certain method to finding Thirium in destroyed and deactivated androids. Ideally, one should find an android that had the least amount of wear-and-tear, the least amount of visible damage, because those were the most recent additions to the junkyard and would be the most likely to still have Thirium trapped in their bodies. From there, there were multiple points they could attach the tube to so they could drain the blood into the bags they’d brought with them.  
  
Simon shuddered at the sight of disembodied limbs on the ground, a cracked eye or a detached leg. Every day he was confronted with the bleak reality that there was not much of a future for deviant androids. Eventually all roads led to death by deactivation or destruction, and really, what was the point of all this misery just to cling on for another few days, weeks, months?  
  
But then, that was just Simon.  
  
He could hardly give up on the others. Even if he occasionally lost his will to plow on, many of them had not, and he couldn’t very well let them down because of his own weariness.  
  
[ _Found one_.]  
  
Simon sighed, relieved but still tense. At least they’d go home with something tonight; sometimes they went back with little to nothing. He found a corpse with a little Thirium left, just enough to get something out of it, and started siphoning it.  
  
The first time he’d done this, it had been disgusting, disturbing, horrifying: It felt like he was violating the android to which the blood originally belonged. It felt like he was stealing, even though the android was dead and could not use it anymore. It felt wrong, even though it was the only option available for them if they were to keep the other androids in Jericho a chance to survive. They had yet to run across the recognizable body of a former Jericho resident in the junkyard, but Simon was preoccupied with the idea that one day they would move a body aside and find Ailish and Adam, who’d planned to go to Canada and never been heard from again; maybe Dreyfus, the android that had been in charge of Jericho when Simon had first arrived there. He knew it was coming one day, and he dreaded it.  
  
But what really bothered him, what haunted him in his sleep was the idea that someday, someday very soon, Simon could be the one rotting in the junkyard with someone taking his blood. He could be a lifeless corpse devoid of life and personality, gone forever to wherever androids went when they died- if they went anywhere at all. And then someone from Jericho would find his body, and all he would be remembered as another lost android with an undignified burial ground in a fucking _junkyard._  
  
Simon couldn’t think about it.  
  
He had to dull himself to everything that was not the task at hand and not think any more than he had to. It was the only way he could survive.  
  
Simon was nearly done when he heard from behind him:  
  
“Excuse me.”  
  
Simon turned, and started sharply when he saw the android behind him. He was missing almost half his skull; where a human would have had soft, squishy tissue and flesh, an androids had clusters of wires and biocomponents that allowed them to see and hear and taste and smell, so many delicate things that allowed androids to function as they did. Androids could not vomit, but what Simon felt now, like the biocomponents in his chest and stomach were _squeezing_ and relaxing, _squeezing_ and relaxing- this had to be an android’s equivalent of gut-churning nausea.  
  
“I can’t find my bird. Where’s my bird?”  
  
The skin and casing around the left side of his mouth was gone, and all his teeth on that side were perfectly visible; he was missing a few.  
  
“Your bird?” Simon echoed faintly, slowly edging backwards and only finding a wall of android bodies behind him; he was on the edge of the pit, nowhere to run.  
  
“My bird. I’ve lost my bird. I need my bird.”  
  
“I- I don’t have your bird,” Simon said.  
  
[ _Help._ ]  
  
[ _Where are you?_ ]  
  
“I need my _bird_ ,” The android insisted, stuck in this loop of questions about his bird. “Where is my _bird?_ ”  
  
The more Simon stared at him, the more he considered that the most likely cause of this head-injury was probably a shotgun blast. And this was just a hunch, but the closer the android got to him, the more aggressive his tone became, the more Simon wondered if maybe he’d actually done something to warrant being shot. Not all deviants were pleasant freedom-seekers, unfortunately.  
  
“ _I can’t find my bird!_ ” The android shrieked, fists clenched down at his sides, “ _I need my bird!_ ”  
  
“I-I-I can h-help you find your b-b-bird,” Simon stuttered, really panicking now. He was trapped in a corner with no way to run, an angry android closing in on him, and Simon was not a fighter- the few times he’d been called upon to fight had ended either in him getting his ass kicked or someone intervening and helping him. He had no instincts for aggression, no instincts for combat at all because he was a caretaker android, not a soldier. When situations like this came along and he couldn’t talk his way out of it, he tended to freeze up.  
  
“ _I WANT MY BIRD! I NEED MY BIRD? **YOU STOLE MY BIRD!**_ ”  
  
The android lunged at him, falling on Simon and ripping at his clothes, his hair, his face. Simon was lucky- the android’s head-injury seemed to prevent him from attacking with the sort of coordination one would expect from an android. It was like watching a drunken human flailing about, the blows painful but not precise enough to do any real damage. Simon brought his arms up to cover his face, rolling onto his side and curling in on himself to protect the biocomponents in his torso.  
  
“ _Simon!_ ”  
  
Josh tackled the android, sending them flying into a pile of disembodied limbs. Simon rolled onto his stomach, stumbling slightly as he got to his feet because he was shaking so badly from the panic. “Josh!”  
  
Josh was stronger and much faster, and he quickly disentangled himself, jumping away from where the android was laying, trying to right itself. “Let’s go, let’s go!” Josh grabbed Simon by the arm, and Simon scooped his bag off the ground as they raced for the edge of the pit that they’d slid down. They scrambled up quickly, even though Simon was sure that the android lacked the coordination and strength to come after them. They reached the top, scaled the fence, and bolted down the street, only stopping when they’d gotten a safe distance away from the fence.  
  
Simon fell to his knees, shaking. Josh knelt down beside him, putting a hand on his back. “Are you okay? Are you alright?”  
  
Simon nodded wordlessly.  
  
“ _Thieves! You stole my bird! Thieves! You stole my bird!_ ” The android’s wails rose up from the pit, echoing dangerously in the night.  
  
“Christ,” Josh whispered.  
  
Simon shivered, pulling his backpack closer to him and making sure the small amount of Thirium he’d taken was still safe; it was, and that was good, because a warning sign had popped onto Simon’s HUD:  
**  
**[WARNING: LIMITED DAMAGE TO FACIAL CASING QUADRANT #2]  
  
Simon touched his cheek, and his fingers came away smeared with Thirium. He wanted to scream with frustration: He’d have to use some of the blue blood they’d taken tonight, and they really hadn’t gathered all that much.  
  
There were times when he considered that they were taking blood from one corpse to fuel another.  
  
“ _Thieves! Thieves! Thieves!_ ”  
  
“He’s not wrong.”  
  
Josh sighed.  
  
“Let’s just go home.”  
  
Simon didn’t argue.  
   
-End


End file.
